Oh Netflix. Bloody, bloody Netflix. For all of your bemusement, you sure can bring out the best in a body at times. That is why when my wife recommended a little film entitled Tonight You’re Mine because of our mutual adoration for music festivals and quirky comedies that was currently instant streaming on the site, I bit. And in a nutshell, the film was……good. Not grand. Not spectacular, just, good. Good as it was, I found myself only truly falling in love with the concept of the film itself. Some of the dialogue was choppy and seemed ill rehearsed. Antics ran wild, and only to a certain annoyance. But, eventually my bias opinion for these modern day PG-13 rated orgies took hold, and I enjoyed the film just enough.

But as a man who once aspired to be a screenwriter, I once again found myself blustered by the idea that the story was so magnificent, that there had to be a genius mind behind writing the film. This of course is not to knock the filmmakers and all those behind the film, but my personal preferences have always led directly back to the writing. It is always the writing that amuses and entertains me most. So, I decided to find out just who was behind the keypad on this one. And lo and behold, I discovered an extremely interesting man, who has been far more renowned in other works besides penning words for films. The great Thomas Leveritt is a painter, author, and so much more. He has been through war and tyranny, and love and laughter. My research on this illustrious cat was found to be quite inspiring. And said inspiration ran so deep that I decided I need to get a few words from this mastermind, and see what else he has going on and maybe learn his thoughts on one my latest Netflix findings (you may or may not be surprised by what he has to say). And out of pure unadulterated luck, he was willing to speak with us. So here you have it folks, a few words with the modern day wise man Thomas Leveritt!

You are a painter, a novelist, a journalist, a screenwriter, and more. Tell us, what don’t you do? And are you ever going to get to that?

Music! Never been able to do music. I learnt to play a slew of Radiohead songs on guitar, but it was more out of brute memorization than a grasp of things like keys, scales, etc. Having a tin ear I couldn’t sing along, so I wasn’t even any use around a campfire.

Having said that, I did write a screenplay about musicians, which later found life as the worst movie ever made. In general, the more I get into narrative film, the more I realize that it’s kind of a music-delivery system.

Can you tell us about the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and what it means to be part of such a society?

Oh, it’s just a trade body. Full of charming painters. They have an annual show at their HQ on the Mall, just down the road from Buckingham Palace, and if you’re interested in having a portrait painted they’ll connect you with the one of your choice & charge an agent’s fee. While much in Britain is secretive & caballic & requires ludicrous hats, this isn’t one of them. They came out of the great craze for oil painting at the end of the nineteenth century, around Whistler and Sargent (both Americans in England), when a lot of these societies sprang up: the New English Art Club, the Chelsea Arts Club, and so on. Don’t know how they got the ‘Royal’ part, though. The royal family periodically just turns things royal. Like, whole towns. Lynn became King’s Lynn; Tonbridge Wells, Royal Tonbridge Wells. The National Theatre was recently royalized. It’s one of the perils of English living.

The Bosnian War is no secret to our regular readers here at TWS thanks to the our friends Mike Phillips and Bill Carter and The Spirit of Sarajevo. And your 2008 novel, The Exchance Rate Between Love and Money, used the war as a theme as well. If would, could you tell us how this came to be? What inspired you to use the war as a background?

I left school in June 1994 and went straight out there to see what was going on. The media picture was badly muddled; there was a lot of false equivalency, a lot of ‘they’re all as bad as each other’. Once I got out there I realized, there had been pretty much no war with as clear-cut good guys and bad guys. It got under my skin.

Anyway, in 2005 I had just read Written on the Body by Jeannette Winterson. It’s basically 200 pages of lesbian sex, and I thought, hell, I can do that. It started out with some kind of lysergic love scene, in which a wedding-gown unpeels itself and tiptoes out of a room, and it was all very lovely & soft focus, but you can’t have that all the time, and I needed something hard & grey to offset it. So I set it in Sarajevo, and then the war got its feet under the table and ousted all the dreamy lovemaking. As that war tends to. So…

Have you returned to Bosnia since the book was released?

Sure. The skiing is great. If you recall, the 1984 winter olympics were held there. If you go off-piste, the tape doesn’t just say ‘off-piste’, it says ‘Danger: Mines’, which adds a frisson.

How did the idea for Tonight You’re Mine come about?

Oh, christ. Well. Basically, the central requirement in reluctant-buddy movies is to force two people who don’t want to be together to be together. Devices include the Irascible Police Chief, the Eccentric Court Order, the Adorable Stepchild… I just thought, hell, why not handcuff ’em together? I liked the idea of a musician having to play a gig while handcuffed to some loomer, who’s just sort of standing around on stage trying to look inconspicuous, and the rest of the screenplay emerged from there.

It was a fluffy little project that emerged out of an offhand joke with my girlfriend in the summer of 2009. So I pounded out a screenplay – I set it at Glastonbury, and saw it as one of those ensemble Working Title productions that have been so good at enunciating an offbeat British happiness (Four Weddings, Billy Elliot, Love Actually, Wimbledon). No-one’s made a really definitive festival movie, and since it’s one of the major aspects of British life these days, I thought Working Title might go for it. But they were working on a Eurovision script at the time that was insufficiently different. But the production company who’d optioned my novel wanted to know if I’d ever written a screenplay before, before they let me adapt it, so I showed them this festival movie script, which they liked, off the back of which they got the money to make it from BBC Films.

Reviews for the film were mixed. Paste Magazine said it was “pap of the dullest variety”, whatever that really means. Meanwhile The New York Times said it was “unusually fresh and lively”. So from the mindset of a screenwriter, what was your opinion of the final outcome?

Oh, it was a trainwreck (is this why you’re interviewing me?). The Times was just being civil.

There was a lack of control in pre-production; the director let the actors choose their own band-names (they chose ‘The Dirty Pinks’, which – just – o.m.g.?), write their own songs, which the musical directors were rehearsing while the director hadn’t told them had already been cut from the script, etc, all of which indicated this amazing disregard for overall vision. When time came to shoot, there was no script supervision, so the actors more or less made up lines where they thought something should go; whole scenes simply weren’t filmed; there were no pickups to reshoot them afterwards, so a lot of the script made literally no sense. The male lead was hideously miscast. It was a mess. I wasn’t even that wedded to the script, the director had me do five rewrites in a week, which I did for free, just for the pleasure of helping get the thing made, but in the end it was so clear that it was going to be this pointless bonfire of someone else’s money that I left them to it, about a week before principal photography. I tried to be nice about it; I thanked them very much for making my script and wished them luck, and didn’t go around badmouthing them, even to BBC Films, but it didn’t make any difference. When films go bad, I guess the recrimination & bad blood is more or less inevitable.

So, I still think there’s an unfilled slot for a festival movie. I periodically try to persuade execs to make one.

If we were to steal your iPod for a day, what sort of stuff would we hear?

Rilo Kiley (people still use iPods?)

What can we expect to read/see/hear from Thomas Leveritt in the near future?

After that filming experience, I decided to start directing myself. So I’ve been making a lot of short films, both narrative and documentary. Right at the moment I’m producing Vice-style mini-docs for a new internet title that’s launching in September (at Supercompressor.com). One of them is on UV cinematography, which, if it works, will be pretty amazing. People look radically different in the UV spectrum: grizzled, war-torn. It’s like seeing their soul.

What was the last thing that made you smile?

As I was being thrown out of a bar last night, the bouncer gave me $5 compensation for my unfinished beer.

A couple of years ago, I absolutely fell in love with a little band that had become renowned in my then residents of Spokane, Washington known as The Horse Thieves. For a brief period, these guys were stealing shows and hearts of listeners. But, like most good things, two things happened: (1) I found out about them just a bit too late and (2) The Horse Thieves would be no more. After releasing two full length albums (on the same day!) in 2011, the band decided mutually to go their separate ways. And as their songs remained a staple in my playlists, I continued to metaphorically pray that this would not be the last I would hear from this fantastic band of wordsmiths and folk hounds.

And to my great bemusement, it shall not be! Sort of. Former frontman and master of songwriting with a voice that is simply light and dramatizing in some ways Marshall McLean has thrown together a fantastic group of musicians and took off on his own. Still thriving in the secretly beautiful city of Spokane, McLean continues to prove that he is a master musician, and brilliant mind in his own right. The enigmatic Marshall McLean Band shares similar sentiments to the days of The Horse Thieves only because it is yet another branding of Marshall’s soul put on digital wax and handed out to the listener. And we should all be so damn grateful for this.

In support of their upcoming album, Glossolalia, MMB has released their first single, “Sinking Ships”, which is without a doubt a prime example of the beauty that is certain to ensue as this band progresses on, as well as being some of the finest work McLean has put out to date. With its taunting sort of jingle jangly guitar work and Marshall’s overtly original style of singing, it will definitely be quite the feet to not lose yourself in bewilderment and excitement for the rest of the album to be released. In the simplest depictions, The Marshall McLean Band is new age folk music at its absolute finest!

Stream “Sinking Ships” for yourself right HERE, and find out for yourself.

You can also purchase the single from the band’s WEBSITE, or receive a free copy of the single with a purchase of one of their sweet t-shirts! Check it out!

I have found myself dancing around with myself listening to Split Ends Mend for quite a while now, and am sourly disappointed in myself for only getting around to letting you all know about it until now. But dammit if Sweet Felony isn’t one of the sweetest female fronted groups since the likes of Seattle’s Tacocat or Portland’s own Forever. And they have created an amazing punk rock/americana/doo wop/what have you album that is just such a delight.

The tracklist for Split Ends Mend is absolutely a collection of songs that will send you on an emotional rollercoaster. Just after the americana infused “Truckstop” is wrapping up, we are thrown in to a imaginable 80’s mystique with the apologetically correct track “Love On”, and then slings you off in to a doo wop and electric guitar driven sing along state of mind with “Surrender”, and the trends continue on. The trend being that there really is no trend to the beautiful madness that is Sweet Felony.

Sweet Felony’s front women Christa DiBiase and Amanda Guilbeaux are definitely a stand out sensation which is a great feat considering they reside in the legendary Bay Area, where so many legends have thrived. And the spirit is obviously continuing on as Christa and Amanda pour their heart and soul in to the beautiful tunes they will soon be known world-wide for. This is some seriously pretty and mesmerizing stuff here!

Split Ends Mend is currently available HERE. The band will support the release with their new drummer Jefferson Marshall (Assembly Head of the Sunburst Sound). They’re currently writing songs for a full-length album, with a release planned for sometime in late 2013.

In my humble opinion, nothing really beats a female singer/songwriter with some beautiful stories to tell. Of course “beautiful” is all relevant. In so many ways, the greatest bouts with misery can bring out some of the most beautiful words the English language has to offer. Some of the sweetest love songs are merely a house built on a plot of land called pain. So even when anger fills the heart, there is always a much kinder way to put your heart out on that metaphorical line, and release whatever demons that reside within yourself. And no greater example of such a thing can be found than in the immaculate album Go To Hell from Seattle’s latest gem of a musician known as Star Anna.

With a voice that simply uplifts your spirit even as she tried to bring you down, Star Anna creates a delightful conjuring of what it once felt like to hear a of angel with the attitude of the devil herself. Go To Hell has the feel of a closet being opened, and the skeletons scatter around your dirty Chuck Taylor’s. It is a little bit country, a little bit punk, obviously Americana inspired, and all around delight.

Whether you enjoy soft-hearted love ballads like “Mean Kind of Love”, bitter keyboard filled hate speech like “For Anyone”, or the sweetest Tom Waits cover ever imaginable like “Come On Up To The House”, this is an album that is going to make yearn to love and live all over again. Of course, a personal favorite of mine has to be “Everything You Know”, which is a perfectly orchestrated bit of mellow dramatic rage! Anna sings with such delicacy yet with so much damn empowerment that she is an absolute thrill to listen to. There isn’t a single disappointing aspect of this amazing album. It’s just all there for your taking.

Go To Hell will be released on September 24th on Spark & Shine Records. Head on over HERE to learn how you can pre-order the album TODAY!

I’ve never truly understood Punk Rock. I’m also certain I never truly will, and I am okay with that. I have enjoyed several different artists who have been tagged as being “punk”, but I never really put so much thought in to whether they are “truly punk” and what not. Of course, this whole bloody debate is as old and tired as who came first, the chicken or the egg, the man or the god, and so on and so on.

But one thing is for absolute certain, using Punk Rock as a theme in the world of cinema is definitely a go to strategy. And some times it falls flat on its face, most likely due to the internal conflicts of the world of Punk Rock. But, sometimes the entire demeanor of the lifestyle is captured so damn perfectly behind the lens that even the most pretentious of “true Punks” have to give props. And in the late 90’s, we saw a shining example of such a film in the critically acclaimed film SLC Punk, a film that has continued to be a mesmerizing tale that has inspired so many people be it punk rockers or not. And this was all in thanks to the mastermind known to the world as James Merendino. His semi-autobiographical masterpiece has continued to intrigue audiences with each passing year, and has even developed a whole shit ton of buzz around the idea that Merendino is currently working on a “sequel” of sorts to the legendary film. James is also the genius behind films like The Invisible Life of Thomas Lynch and El Club de la muerte. And he was kind enough to take some time out of his busy ass schedule to give us a bit of insight on the background of the legend he has created for himself, about his upcoming film, and basically just shooting the shit in general. So here you have it folks, the great James Merendino!

I understand you worked under the wing of the legendary late Daniel Melnick. What was your involvement with Mr. Melnick, and how did said tenure affect and influence your career?

The answer to that question could fill three books. Short answer. Working with Dan Melnick was the best worst thing that ever happened to me. In the end, it had no physical effect on my career. But he definitely taught me how to play.

It is widely known that SLC Punk is semi-autobiographical to yourself, and many of the characters are based on real people. Tell us, do you still hang out with some of those characters?

Actually just one, and I talk to a few on FB.

What do you consider to be your biggest achievement as a filmmaker on a personal level?

The ability to even make a movie is such a herculanian and ill advised endeavor I would say that being able to say I am a filmmaker is the achievement.

In your professional opinion, what do you believe the greatest difference between the American and European film industries and what do you believe to be there perks and common traits with one another?

I am not sure. I guess I find European Cinema to be more friendly to Independent movies and the US is friendlier to Huge ideas.

What is your opinion on the current state of punk rock? What do believe the future holds for the genre?

I have no opinion about Punk rock. Other than I like it and I am sure it will stick around.

If you could create the biopic for any punk group from the late 70’s or early 80’s, who would it be?

Minor Threat. Simply because I really respect Ian.

What made you decide to revisit the world of SLC Punk with the forthcoming sequel due out next year?

I just feel and felt that there is more to say about ones own life. It’s not so much a sequel as much as it is the way I feel comfortable talking about things that concern me.

What else does the future hold of James Merendino? What have you been working on lately?

I will keep making movies and eventual die. Lately I’ve been working on a sequel/spinoff to a movie I made called SLC Punk. Before that I made a few small movies. And I’ve been a hired hand on several screenplays.

For many years now, I have been obsessed with the Beat Generation and the characters that made up such a powerful movement. But, much like so many profound writers and artists of so many different times, it is actually their own lives that are even more interesting than even the work they produced. Of course this is not to discredit the beauty so many of these great folks have brought to this earth as it is crucial to this world. But, I will be damned if I didn’t admit that what has always interested me the most about this cast of characters was the life they lived outside of their work, which ironically was almost directly reflective of their real lives anyway.

I get this. But even better, an person of actual intelligence and sound mind seems to believe the same. Hilary Holladay is one of today’s most brilliant minds in the world of literature. She has taught the growing minds for several years at James Madison University, as well as giving the rest of us so much more. She has written on Kerouac and his importance in American literature. But, as an even greater feet, she wrote to us about a man that seems to be forgotten at times. I am speaking of the late great Herbert Huncke. The man who is ultimately almost as responsible, possibly even more so than, Lucien Carr in being the side characters that made the Beats in to the legends they are today.

Of course I could go on, but I think it is best to stop right here and let Hilary explain a bit more for the noobs and new Beat fans out there. Also it is about time we get to know Hilary a bit more and get to know a woman who has contributed so much to the world of literature and writing that we should all bow and praise such a wonderful human being. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Hilary Holladay…..

For those of us who are unilaterally misinformed, who is Herbet Huncke, and why did you decide to profile this man in your book American Hipster: A Life of Herbert Huncke?

Herbert Huncke (1915-1996) was a young hustler from Chicago who arrived in New York City in 1939. Intuitive, curious, hooked on drugs, and haunted by a difficult childhood, he spent much of his time on 42nd Street getting to know fellow crooks and addicts. In 1944, he met William S. Burroughs and, through Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He showed these young apprentice writers the gritty underside of New York, spoke in a jazzy hipster style that bemused and fascinated them, and told stories (many of which he later wrote down) that convinced Kerouac that Huncke was a “genius of a storyteller.” In time, all of the major Beat writers included a Huncke-based character in their writings, and Huncke’s use of the word “beat” (as in “I’m beat, man”) inspired Kerouac’s coinage of the label Beat Generation. Huncke went on to publish several books, including a memoir titled Guilty of Everything, and The Herbert Huncke Reader appeared in 1997, a year after his death at age 81.

As to why I wrote American Hipster: A Life of Herbert Huncke, I was just deeply curious about this guy. He always showed up as a footnote, an anecdote, or a thumbnail sketch in the bios of major Beat authors, and I wanted to know his whole story or as much of it as I could track down. When I read the Huncke Reader, furthermore, I discovered that he was a truly unusual and talented writer. There is a pared-down eloquence and honesty to his stories and sketches that Kerouac and Ginsberg aspired to do but rarely achieved in quite the same way that Huncke did. If he hadn’t been a good writer as well as a key catalyst for the Beat Movement, I probably would not have pursued the project.

What was it that initially interested you in the members of the illustrious folks known as the Beat Generation?

They were fun, maddening, sexy, irreverent, bold, candid, and so different from most of the authors I read in school. As fate would have it, my first job out of grad school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell–Kerouac’s hometown. So I was literally on a Beat path, and that path led me to teach the Beats, run a conference on them, and sweat it out for many years writing American Hipster: A Life of Herbert Huncke.

In your expert opinion, how do you see the Beats being perceived today? What do you believe is their ultimate impact?

Every generation seems to discover the Beats and embrace them in its own way. This time around, we are seeing a lot of movies inspired by the lives and writings of the Beat authors. These movies may lead some people to read Kerouac, Ginsberg, Huncke, et al., who would have overlooked them otherwise–so, yay for that. Also, I think the level of Beat scholarship is on the rise, and that is good news for everybody who wants to go beyond reading these authors just for pleasure. There is still much research to be done, of course, on the women of the Beat Movement, the overlap between the Beats and the Black Arts Movement, and the larger landscape that includes the musicians, painters, and other artists who hung out with the writers we know so much about. Ph.D. students looking for dissertation topics might want to explore these subjects if they are into the Beats.

As for impact, it’s hard to imagine the counterculture of the 1960s without the Beat Movement as foreshadowing and partial impetus. The Beats had some influence on the punk scene of later years and, especially through Gary Snyder, on environmental activism. They also helped bring Buddhism into the public eye. Because so many of the Beat writers were gay or bisexual, and were very open about sex in their writings, they continue to liberate readers who are just coming to terms with their own sexual identities. Finally, though the Beat preoccupation with street drugs has never interested me very much–not so long as I can get my hands on wine and chocolate–it is an important dimension of the Beat Movement, and some enterprising soul could possibly stitch a thread connecting the Beats’ drug use with the current trend toward legalizing marijuana in the U.S.

How we perceive the Beats’ lasting impact depends so much on our individual perceptions that I hesitate to generalize. However, they don’t seem to be going away anytime soon. There are plenty of good writers–much better writers, even–who don’t get all the fanfare and discussion this particular gang gets. The Beats have a continuing charisma that we may as well call sex appeal. They are not for everybody, but everybody feels some kind of buzzy attraction or frantic annoyance upon encountering them for the first time.

What are you most proud of when you look back on all the time you have spent as director of the Kerouac Center of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell?

I’m still just thrilled to my toes that we were able to bring the On the Road scroll (the 120-foot long, single-spaced draft of the novel that Kerouac typed in three weeks in 1951) to Lowell National Historical Park. It was so great working with the curator, the historians, and the park superintendent in putting the exhibit together, and the rocking, wall-shaking opening night reception was the best party I’ve ever been to.

In your expert opinion, how has the world of blogging and tweeting changed the world of writing as profession? Are uneducated hacks such as myself destroying the medium?

Well, I have no reason to believe you are an uneducated hack, and I’m not an expert on blogging or tweeting. However, I think as professional writers we need to be very careful to limit our time on the web so that we don’t exhaust ourselves with the trivial and the banal–and by that I mean what we write as well as what we read. We would all do well to heed the advice a woman once yelled at John McEnroe when he threw a tantrum at Wimbledon: “Shut up and play your bloody game!”

Can you tell us a bit about The Poetry Foundation?

My interviews with Lucille Clifton and W.D. Snodgrass appear on the Poetry Foundation website, and the Poetry Foundation is an excellent resource for anyone seeking poems and bios on poets. I use its website all the time as a resource when I teach poetry classes.

Do you have any other books in the works? If not, is there anything you are interested in profiling?

I have a novel coming out in 2014 from Knox Robinson Publishing called Tipton.It’s about a group of teenaged orphans coming of age in rural Oklahoma in the years leading up to World War II. Several of these orphans go off to war and eventually make their way to Orange County, Virginia, where they seek out the former orphanage housemother they were all, to varying degrees, infatuated with. I recently moved back to Orange County, where my family roots are, so I’m living right where much of the book takes place. In mood and subject matter, Tipton is about as far from the Beats as I could get.

What was the last thing that made you smile?

I’m going to revise the question to the last thing that made me laugh: a hawk that chased my cat and me across the lawn. But there was a lot of yelling and running before the laughing.

The rapidly boiling success of new age folk and country-esque/Elliott Smith inspired melodramatic indie bands as of lately is pretty phenomenal. And if that weren’t specific enough, there is also the male/female dueling vocals that have become quite popular as well. In the 5 years I have been the internet’s answer to the kid who creates underground music zines in his high school principal’s office to share with his 4 friends, I have watched (or listened to, I suppose) so many of these great acts and frankly, I never get tired of them! It’s just such a wholesome and enlightening experience to hear such beautiful lyric driven, stripped down, and simply beautiful songs that feel as though they are derived from the soul of a man and woman you don’t know. And with that being said, I have found a few more gems in the songs of The Sea The Sea.

The Sea The Sea is just about as perfect as new folk groups can get. And the beauty is in the truly entertaining brand of complicated simplicity they bring to their fans. Much like their band’s namesake suggests, Mira Staley and Chuck E. Costa are two people who absolutely understand just how far you can go with a great set of pipes and the ability to write one hell of a ditty that gets your toes tapping and your heart burning. On a personal level, this attributes shine the brightest on a track from their debut album, both of which are titled “Love We Are We Love”. While the entirety of their debut album of the same title is wonderful, this is the track that does it for me. It is just so damn catchy and filled with love and hope. I’ve already had some brilliant sing a long moments with my wife and kids as this song rang throughout my Subaru Outback.

Whilst listening to a group like this, it is hard not to draw comparison to the recently successful Iceland base group Of Monsters and Men, who I can’t say enough good words about. Except that folks need to realize that they are not a new concept. They are simple the updated version of Mumford and Sons. A group that is been individually singled out for one reason or another for doing what so many others have been doing for years. And in the least pretentious way possible, I have to say that The Sea The Sea is a group that should be a model of perfection rather than a comparison. Then again, none of this really matters. The Sea The Sea have proven themselves time and time again as they tour across the country having fans fall in love with them over and over again. This is the sort of success we should be measuring. The ability to be absolutely genius at what you do, and developing perfect songs about love, fate, despair, and longing for a far prettier world. And this is exactly what a group as amazing as The Sea The Sea has managed to do.

The Sea The Sea will be performing at the 23rd Annual Rocky Mountain Folks Festival on August 18th. If you find yourself anywhere near the Rockies around this time, you owe it to yourself to check out what will be your newest favorite band. You also owe it to yourself to head over the their Website and pick up their beautiful self titled debut album.